Veteran Dice Tower reviewer Sam Healey resigns in wake of saying Alex Pretti, Renee Good were to blame for ICE killing them, after comments began impacting review giant’s annual pledge drive

Sam Healey, the veteran Dice Tower reviewer who has contributed to the channel for much of the last 20 years, has resigned after comments he made blaming Alex Pretti and Renee Good for their deaths at the hands of ICE agents began to impact the company’s annual crowdfunding pledge drive.

Healey posted on Facebook and in the comments section of the Dice Tower’s Gamefound campaign yesterday to say he was stepping down from his paid, part-time role at the business, adding that site founder Tom Vasel was “not putting me up to this”.

He said, “I do not want my friends to suffer any longer. Those of you who have cancelled your support because of my presence can feel free to back them once again. They deserve it, and you know it.

“They provide so much content, and they do a great job with everything from daily content creation to putting on no less than three conventions and a cruise each year.

“They deserve your support and with me now out of the way, you should absolutely give it to them without reservation.”

Healey made his comments about Good and Pretti on his Facebook page on January 26, the day after the latter was killed by federal agents during a protest in Minneapolis against the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in the city.

After sharing a post from American political commentator Armstrong Williams which questioned the judgement of Pretti carrying a concealed firearm at the protest, even though he was legally allowed to do so, Healey began responding to multiple commenters who disagreed with that view.

Replying to one comment which read, “The real issue is ICE executing American citizens on the streets”, Healey responded, “Frankly, the real issue is American citizens being told that it’s okay to illegally impede and/or obstruct legal law enforcement operations because the federal agents aren’t law enforcement officers. That’s the real problem.”

He continued, “We agree that they were needlessly shot. We disagree with where the blame and guilt lie.
These two people should not have put themselves into these situations. They are tragic deaths, make no mistake about that. They could have been prevented by better choices.”

Responding to a separate comment accusing him of victim blaming, Healey wrote, “This isn’t victim blaming. I’m simply stating [Pretti] shouldn’t have been there in the first place, nor should the lady have been that he felt the need to protect.

“He made the choice to go into a volatile situation while carrying, posturing himself against law enforcement officers. From a basic conceal-carry course point of view, he screwed up. That’s not victim blaming, that’s the honest truth. We are ultimately responsible for what we choose to do.”

Two days after that Facebook post negative comments about Healey’s views began appearing on the Dice Tower’s 2026 Pledge Drive on Gamefound, which has been running since January 7 targeting $275,000.

Many of those comments threatened to cancel or hold back support for the pledge drive until the Dice Tower took action over Healey’s public statements, which led to a pushback from other commenters supporting the Dice Tower in not addressing the situation.

The Dice Tower has not made a public statement about Healey’s views, or his resignation. When BoardGameWire contacted Tom Vasel for comment on the situation, a statement on Healey’s time with the Dice Tower, and his decision to leave, he responded, “I don’t give statements about how I deal with my employees. The situation has been dealt with.”

Long-time Contributor

Healey first appeared on the Dice Tower podcast almost exactly 20 years ago, becoming a co-host for about 100 episodes before stepping back from that role in 2009.

He began working full time at the Dice Tower in 2015 across reviews, live-plays and top ten list creation, before leaving four years later for personal reasons which required him to relocate.

Healey joined Darkest Dungeon board game publisher Mythic Games in 2020 as US community director, but left that role two years later amid the company disclosing growing financial problems which ultimately led to the liquidation of the business.

He rejoined the Dice Tower part time in 2024 after the company’s pledge drive that year included his return as a late-announcement $380,000 stretch goal, which the crowdfund managed to beat by $767.

This year’s pledge drive has just passed $281,000 with about 12 hours of the campaign left to run, having cleared its $275,000 goal overnight.

The Dice Tower uses proceeds from its annual crowdfunding drive to pay its ten full-time employees and five part-time staff, saying it gets the majority of its funding each year from the campaign. It also brings in some money from its Patreon, and is currently sponsored by companies including Allplay and Board Game Bliss.

The reviews giant, which has more than 350,000 subscribers on YouTube and has published over 26,000 videos on the site, has been running an annual crowdfund since 2013 – with its debut campaign bringing in just over $69,000 from about 1,400 backers.

Dollars raised through the annual campaign grew steadily for a decade to reach a high of $410,000 in 2023, but fell to about $380,000 the following year and $350,000 in 2025.

Backer numbers have also been falling since a high of nearly 8,500 in 2021, and last year had dropped to more than 40% from that peak to 4,880.

Just over 3,640 backers have supported the campaign so far this year, with 12 hours of the crowdfund remaining. The company is using Gamefound for the crowdfund for the second year in a row, having previously run all of its campaigns on Kickstarter barring a single year on Indiegogo in 2017.

The Dice Tower has said it plans to use some of the proceeds from this year’s pledge drive to give its employees a cost-of-living raise and improve the lighting and audio across its three studios.

Writing in a community note on the Dice Tower’s YouTube channel on January 28, company founder Tom Vasel listed the goals of the site as being to promote board games, to entertain, to inform and to support the team’s families.

He said, “We are a gaming channel, and my goal is to keep it that way. We aren’t a political, religious, philosophical, or any other type of channel.

“Talk to me in person, and I have thoughts and opinions on many subjects. But that’s not what we want on the Dice Tower channel – we want it to be singularly about gaming.

“Each year when we run our campaign, there is a lot of negative comments that levied at us. This isn’t a “real job”/we were unfair to a game/we are in the pocket of publishers, etc. Despite I feel that our work stands on its own.

“I am proud of what we’ve done, and while we are indeed imperfect people, I believe we’ve created a YouTube channel, podcast, and conventions that are fun and safe for the entire family.

“I look back at where we started twenty years ago, and I hope you can see more improvements and ways we get better.”